Thursday, July 26, 2018

With a 5-0 lead in the second inning and a promising first inning of work by David Price, the Red Sox were poised for a win over the hapless Baltimore Orioles. Boston already had gotten home runs from Andrew Benintendi, J.D. Martinez and Mookie Betts. Since The Bronx Embalmers had already lost, the lead in the AL East was very likely to be stretched to six full games. Then, the heavens opened. The game was delayed for over 2 1/2 hours and then finally postponed. All the stats—and more importantly, the likely win—were wiped out. The issue this morning is: did the Orioles know the deluge was coming less than ten minutes after the start time, and—if they did—should they have done the responsible thing and not started play at all? Then, at 10:45 PM, with the tarp off and no rain, the game gets called by MLB. According to some of the Red Sox, the Birds brass screwed up—and maybe intentionally. Said Price (succinctly), "[Expletive] yeah I’m pissed."Alex Cora weighed-in as well: "I feel for the team, actually. I don’t care about the home runs. We have a 5-0 lead and we have one of the horses on our mound. It’s not that it’s a guaranteed win, but we know where we’re at and every game matters. I’m not happy about it. I’m annoyed about the whole three-game series." Clearly, there is the suspicion that the Orioles started the game to milk more concession money out of the pathetically thin "crowd" they're attracting these days. With no Manny Machado and no Zach Britton, it's hard to trudge down to the Inner Harbor just to admire the undeniably beautiful ballpark—especially when the quality of play is not anywhere near as beautiful.

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